“Southwestern Alaska contains a reservoir of gold worth an estimated $120 billion. The lakes and tributaries in the region feed into Bristol Bay and a fishery that generates $500 million a year.“
Tag Archives: mining
Greenland Inuit oppose open-pit uranium mine on Arctic mountain-top – The Ecologist
“Recently I [Bill Williams] was invited to assess an old Danish uranium exploration site in Kvanefjeld in southern Greenland.”
Inuit Ataqatigiit – the opposition party in the national parliament – had asked me to talk to local people about the health implications of re-opening the defunct mine.
An Australian firm called Greenland Minerals and Energy (GME) has big plans to extract uranium and rare earth minerals here. It would be a world first: an open-pit uranium mine on an Arctic mountain-top.
Any questions?
Feds: B.C. mines won’t go before international commission
http://www.ktoo.org/2015/09/16/feds-b-c-mines-wont-go-international-commission/
“The department, in responoce to our inquiry, says it’s concerned about British Columbia mining’s impacts on Alaskans, including Native groups, commercial fishermen and the tourism industry. It added that it had shared those concerns with senior levels of Canada and British Columbia’s governments.
But State Department officials say they do not anticipate referring the issue to the International Joint Commission at this time. Instead, they’re relying on increased cooperation between Alaska and British Columbia.”
We have this successful transboundary organization, the IJC, why does the federal government refuse to use?
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Concerned Alaska Native, First Nation representatives attend Seabridge Gold annual meeting – Alaska Journal of Commerce – Breaking News 2015 – Anchorage, AK
“We’ve come to Toronto to ask Seabridge whether it will publicly support an International Joint commission review,” Olsen said in a press release. “We’re deeply concerned about the unprecedented downstream risks to our people, who rely on the health of our rivers for their livelihoods. As with the Pebble Mine, the long-term risks outweigh the rewards.”
Mining project in British Columbia will impact tribal lands an rivers and livelihood …..possible IJC review. Touch on link to read more.
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Feds should pursue stronger EA on Ring of Fire | Sudbury Star
Proceeding with mining development is beung questioned in Northwest Ontario, Ring of Fire, Sudbury. Bullying not way to bring diverse stakeholders together. Excerpt from The Sudbury Star:
The extraction of mineral resources in the remote Ring of Fire represents a multibillion-dollar enterprise, potentially creating thousands of jobs throughout the North. The challenges are significant –but the boost to the North’s economy (and the province) may be worth the investment of public dollars on capital projects, such as a rail or road access.
With comparisons being made between the Ring of Fire and Alberta’s oil sands, it’s no wonder that environmentalists and First Nations communities are wary of runaway development decisions being made by governments without due consideration of future impacts. While bitumen mining in northern Alberta has brought economic growth, it has also created significant social and environmental issues that will likely remain for centuries. To avoid similar negative impacts, a truly comprehensive and consultative environmental assessment process needs to be priority number one.
However, until now, the Conservative government has seemed content to put itself at odds with environmental organizations and First Nations. As a result, the government has needlessly contributed to the delaying development in the Ring of Fire.
http://www.thesudburystar.com/2013/08/21/feds-should-pursue-stronger-ea-on-ring-of-fire
Pebble Mine: Gold Copper v Salmon
I know my choice. What is yours? Excerpt on Pebble mine controversy:
Pebble Mine, if built, will be one of the world’s largest open pit gold and copper mines, yielding 10.8 billion metric tons of ore of which 1% will be usable and 99% would be mine waste stored in what will be the world’s largest earthen dam reservoir – a reservoir that must exist and remain intact forever if the remarkable ecosystem of Alaska’s Bristol Bay is to survive. Any failure will be catastrophic to the surrounding environment. Events are underway to locate this mine on the headwaters of the Kvichak and the Nushagak Rivers which produce over half the salmon in the Bristol Bay Region. This region produces millions of wild salmon annually that represent the largest sustainable harvest of wild salmon on earth. It continues to support not only the indigenous people’s salmon culture that has existed for thousands of years, but is a significant protein source for the world, and the foundation of a food chain that supports not only more than 138 species of wildlife, from grizzly bears and river otters to shorebirds and bald eagles, but the surrounding flora as well. The pristine nature of this ecosystem is extraordinarily fragile and this is a massive gamble – a gamble which has inevitably failed in other salmon-rich drainages now either seriously degraded or eliminated altogether.
READ ON:
Efterklang records in Abandon mining town of Piramiden in The Arctic
Excerpt from Jacob Ganz article about the band Efterklang (meaning reverb) recording in Spitsbergen, Svalbard in the High Arctic: After docking in Piramida, there was nothing to do but wander, collect sounds and worry about the polar bears, one of three land mammals native to the island. One of the reasons for taking the trip, Stolberg says, was hearing that the world’s northernmost grand piano sits in the town’s empty concert hall. But most of the instruments the band found weren’t designed with music in mind. The trio began exploring the abandoned warehouses, playgrounds, residences and courtyards, banging on corrugated metal siding, lamps and fuel tanks (“When you’re up there for nine days, you get to hit on a lot of metal,” Stolberg says. “After some days all these start to sound the same to you.”) For entire article by Ganz at NPR follow this link: How One Band Turned A Ghost Town Into A Giant Recording Studio http://n.pr/YF3OSZ Members of Efterklang include Casper Clausen and Mads Brauer. Book about town by Hein Bjerck-Persistent Memories: Piramiden- A Soviet Mining Town in the High Arctic Published 2010
Lake Levels 